1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication terminal, connected to an IP network for making telephone calls using a predetermined IP phone method, and having browsing means for browsing Internet resources, and also relates to a control method thereof, and a control program thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, the Internet has rapidly come into worldwide use, and Internet phones (hereafter, referred to as “IP phones”) are gathering attention due to the ability thereof to provide users an advantage of markedly reduced communication charges. The currently leading standard in Internet phones is VoIP (ITU-T Recommendation H.323, etc.), and various types of Internet-phone-compliant equipment conforming to this standard have been proposed.
Conventionally, equipment configurations for browsing contents (Web pages, FTP or Gopher directories, Net news, etc.) on the Net using a computer (i.e., browsing such contents with a protocol such as HTTP, FTP, Gopher, NNTP, or the like, most commonly using Web browser software), and equipment configurations for making phone calls using an IP phone, have been made separately. However, in recent years, equipment integrating these two configurations is being realized. Such integrated equipment has various advantages, such as enabling Net contents to be browsed while talking on a telephone, enabling phone calls to be made by specifying phone number information of net contents, and so forth. Of these, the function for browsing net contents while talking on the telephone is different from conventional telephone functions, and accordingly, various types of services and so forth will likely be developed from now on.
However, with the current state of such terminals, it is necessary for a user using the equipment to actively browse contents. That is to say, user operations for using the telephone and user operations for browsing contents are different operations, leading to a problem wherein it is necessary for the user to separately perform contents browsing operations which are more complex than phone operations, besides performing phone operations, so improvement in usability is desired.
Also, in conventional configurations, all control is performed manually, for both phone calls and browsing net contents, and accordingly, in the event that both terminal users between which a call is currently established want to browse Net contents of the same page, for example, complex operations are necessitated, such as each terminal user operating his/her own terminal to browse target net contents while informing each other of the URL of the intended Net contents using voice communication, or one terminal user creating an e-mail containing the URL of the intended Net contents and sending to the other terminal user, with the other terminal user browsing the net contents with reference to the received URL.
Accordingly, with communication terminals capable of making IP calls and browsing Internet resources, a configuration such that calling and receiving parties can share the same Internet source with easy operations, is desired, such as a configuration wherein the other party can browse the current Internet source being browsed with easy operations, for example.